After the Writers & Editors One-on-One conference, followed immediately by BlogHer, I had some major catching up to do in my personal life. And by that, I mean that after being away from home for two weekends in a row, the mess around here had gotten completely out of control.

So imagine my excitement when I was contacted by Bissell last week, letting me know I’d won their BlogHer drawing for a Healthy Home Vacuum, ProHeat 2X® Healthy Home Deep Cleaner, and a $250 SpaFinder.com Gift Certificate.

I am ridiculously excited. Not only have I not used a vacuum that cost more than $75 in, like, ever (and, yes, it shows) but I NEVER win drawings. I was the kid who sat through every church and school raffle choking back a lump in my throat because I never, ever, ever won anything.

But my losing streak is over, baby! Yesterday, FedEx delivered these to my door:

And, of course, a gift certificate for spa goodness.

Now I have some important decisions to make. Vacuum the whole house, then steam clean the carpets all at once? Or go a room at a time?

And then on to the pampering. What do I choose: two massages and a facial, two facials and a massage, a facial-pedi-massage? And where to go in the southwest Michigan area?

I’m going to have fun deciding. Feel free to jump in with suggestions…or just go read some of my latest posts on The Happiest Mom (I promise, they have nothing to do with awards or vacuums).

I promise, this post will not contain any lectures about blogging or writing! Just a little summary of what’s up with me.

Well, first of all, I’m still pregnant. My due date is about 11 days away, so I’m coming up on the end…but with my record of going past my due date, I don’t expect any action on that front for a while. I’m still documenting my pregnancy over at WEtv.com–lately I’ve written about whether or not I should microblog my birth, the baby stuff moms really need, and birth anxiety (it’s not just for newbies!)

The Octomom fallout has kept me busy–I’ve done interviews with several newspapers and other media outlets over the past couple weeks, and you can read two of the articles here and here. I was also on last Saturday’s episode of The John & Ken Show on KFI AM 640 in LA. Updated: here’s an MP3 of my interview..

My article “8 Ways Your Baby Says I Love You” is in this month’s issue of Parenting and also available online. There are some strange typos in the online version that I hope are being fixed now.

Mostly, I’m just trying to keep myself as busy and distracted as possible so I don’t hyper-focus on the fact that this baby is going to be here…soon. Because when I start thinking too much about that, I find myself wondering EXACTLY WHEN that’s going to happen, which is just a recipe for that ‘watched pot’ syndrome I know all too well, having subjected myself to it over the last three pregnancies. This time I’m working hard on keeping my life plugging along as normal, so that when BabyGirl does finally decide to make her entrance, it’ll be sort of a pleasant surprise. I’ll do my best to keep you posted.

The New York Times included my thoughts on raising big families–and a picture of my kids and husband and my very pregnant profile–in their story And Baby Makes How Many? (you’ll have to register to read the story, but no worries–I registered with the NYT years ago and they’ve never sent me a single spammy email).

I also wrote about the experience of having my family’s photo taken for the NYT over at largerfamilies.com.